Tigers manager Jim Leyland / JULIAN H. GONZALEZ/DFP

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The angry want answers or, more specifically, a scapegoat to bear the blemish of the first team in major league history to lose a three-game, first-place lead with four games remaining.

Jim Leyland isn't that man.

He'll take the bullet because that's his personality, but firing him isn't the solution. This was the best managerial work of Leyland's career, considering the Tigers' ultimately fatal structural flaws -- the inability to bring runners home with less than two outs and poor corner outfield defense. Despite those obvious imperfections, the Tigers almost got away with stealing a divisional championship.

You can't go from American League manager of the year one second to the managerial unemployment line the next.

There's always second-guessing. Why did he rest Placido Polanco in the Tigers' first potential clincher against Minnesota last Thursday? Why did he pass on pitching Rick Porcello last Saturday against Chicago? Why did he let an obviously tiring Fernando Rodney pitch the 12th inning Tuesday night?

But frustration compromises common sense, and people easily forget the half-dozen managerial decisions every game that allowed a deficient team like the Tigers to remain in the playoff discussion as long as they did.

And if the Tigers overreact and make a change, exactly where do they go for a replacement? How many World Series-winning, multiple-playoff-experienced managers are out there looking for something to do?

Leyland remains the right voice for what will remain a heavily veteran-laden team in 2010.

The Tigers will likely still have one of the top 10 highest payrolls in baseball next season, considering they're now stuck with Magglio Ordoņez's $18-million contract after a season in which he only hit nine home runs and drove in merely 50 runs.

The Tigers must sign Justin Verlander to a lucrative contract extension this winter because he's now only two years away from free agency. That could cost Mike Ilitch another $18 million annually.

And they're still on the hook for $34.5 million next season for Jeremy Bonderman, Nate Robertson and Dontrelle Willis -- three starters from whom they got next to nothing this season.

You don't trust a managerial novice with such potential conflicts.

Nobody wants to hear this right now, the wounds are still too fresh, but this wasn't a choke.

The 2004 New York Yankees who had a 3-0 lead against their supposedly cursed nemesis, Boston, lost four straight for the first time ever in baseball postseason history. That was a choke, a very good team that couldn't perform at its previously high level.

This was more like a collapse, an average team playing over its mediocrity for so long that it couldn't bear the weight of its own limitations in the final two weeks.

There will be the requisite national pity following this latest disappointment, another opportunity for the country to sigh "Oh, woe is Detroit." But if anything, Detroit will remember 2009 as one of its most thrilling, most compelling sports campaigns ever.

There were no parades, no ultimate championships.

But Michigan State fighting for the national championship in its own backyard, the Wings hosting Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals and the Tigers providing everyone with a delightful summer should convince even the most perplexed that the city was pretty fortunate this year.